Squeezed between what works and what Democrats demand — pity DC Mayor Muriel Bowser.
Washington is unquestionably benefiting from President Donald Trump’s policing intervention, Bowser admitted Wednesday: carjackings down 87% and violent crime dropping 45% in the three weeks since the prez sent in the National Guard and took over the city’s police department.
DC residents see the difference too — even if, as loyal Democrats who’ll never say a good word about Trump, they tell pollsters how awful it is.
“We greatly appreciate the surge of officers that enhance what [DC’s own PD] has been able to do in this city,” Bowser kindly said this week.
Hmm: Two weeks earlier, she was slamming the federal takeover as an “authoritarian push” and supporting DC Attorney General Brian Schwalb as he sued to stop it.
Even though at first she’d welcomed the National Guard deployment and vowed to collaborate with the Trump administration.
It’s a tough squeeze: District voters will oust her at the next election if she doesn’t defend “home rule,” but Congress could also oust her (along with the dreadful DC City Council and all the rest of home rule) if she gets in the way of making the city safe.
No self-respecting nation should accept runaway crime in its own capital, but somewhere along the way conventional wisdom in our country decided otherwise; Trump’s opted for common sense, and Bowser plainly realizes she can’t stop it; we suspect she doesn’t even want to, even if politics forces her to say the opposite.
